Eritrea Wire

NAIROBI, KENYA — The U.S. government says more African voices are needed to challenge Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. This week, most African countries voted in favor of a U.N. resolution condemning the conflict in Ukraine waged by Russia. But experts say African nations will likely say little about the war and protecting Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty.

Speaking to an African journalist online Thursday, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Molly Phee said Ukrainians need African support.

“The United States believes strongly that African voices matter in the international community, that your voices matter in the global conversation. We believe that it is critical at this moment in time that the entire international community demonstrates unity and speaks with one voice against this aggression and in support of principles, timeless principles. These include sovereignty, territorial integrity, peaceful resolution of disputes, and protection of civilians,” Rhee said.

On Tuesday in the United Nations General Assembly, 141 countries condemned Russia’s war on Ukraine. Eritrea was the only African country that voted against the resolution and 16 countries from the continent abstained.

Kasaija Apuuli, a political science professor at Makerere University, says Africa has many internal problems and cannot engage itself in a foreign issue.

“We always have our internal problems in Africa. I don’t think it will be advisable for us to engage in matters of course, it concerns us in the sense that these are matters that affect international peace and security, but I don’t think Africa can craft a role in for itself in this kind of arrangement, and moreover we do have [the] European Union which is a premier regional organization in Europe which is engaged in the matter. I don’t think [an] African Union intervention will be welcomed,” Apuuli said.

Russia launched an offensive against Ukraine last week, a decision that has the world condemning Russia and calling on it to withdraw its forces. The United States, European countries and others have hit Russia with economic sanctions.

Wale Olosola, an expert in international politics, says Africa won’t take sides in the conflict, but it needs to stand for respect of international law protecting the rights of the states.

“It makes more important sense to continue to shape the discourse and narratives in terms of helping to preserve, helping to promote the framework of the current global order that stresses the need for countries to respect their equal status under international law. The need for, regardless of size, history, political structure or resources, it needs to protect the interests of all states,” she said.

Phee said her government would help manage the war’s economic impact in countries.

“We see the rise of fuel prices, commodity prices, and we know that this disruption is doubly hard given the earlier impact of the COVID pandemic. But we are already engaged in efforts to promote stable energy and commodity prices, working on supply chains, and you saw this week that President Biden joined other international leaders in releasing strategic oil reserves in an effort to manage fuel prices,” Phee said.

The U.S. government has assured the African governments the conflict in Europe will not affect its engagement with the continent.

Source: Voice of America

WHITE HOUSE — While U.S. President Joe Biden has played a key role in galvanizing Western nations’ condemnation of Moscow’s aggression against Ukraine, his administration is finding it harder to build a global coalition in the Indo-Pacific to isolate Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Key regional partners such as Australia, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan have announced significant financial sanctions and export controls against Moscow, but others have resisted Western pressure to even condemn the invasion.

Most notable among these is India. While it is a strong U.S. partner in containing China in the Indo-Pacific, New Delhi relies heavily on Russian defense purchases and abstained from the United Nations General Assembly resolution demanding that Russia “immediately, completely and unconditionally withdraw all of its military forces from the territory of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders.”

India also abstained on a U.N. Security Council vote (( )) that Russia vetoed.

India’s reluctance

Biden convened an emergency virtual Quad meeting on Thursday, a day after India’s abstention from General Assembly vote. The Quad, an informal grouping of the U.S., India, Australia and Japan, was established mainly to address regional concerns about China’s rise.

India — which relies on Russia militarily in its border disputes with Pakistan and China — is in a predicament, analysts say. While India’s Western allies expect it to uphold the liberal international order and condemn Russian aggression, its regional geopolitical requirements and dependence on Moscow limit its options.

“India cannot overnight stop all purchases — especially of military spare parts — from Russia, but it can show that going forward, it is going to speed up its military modernization and look to other defense partners — U.S., France, Israel, South Korea — instead,” said Aparna Pande, director of Hudson Institute’s Initiative on the Future of India and South Asia.

“This will be especially helpful as the CAATSA sanctions are still on the table when it comes to India’s purchase of [the] S-400 missile system from Russia,” Pande told VOA. He was referring to the 2017 Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act — a law allowing sanctions on any country that has “significant transactions with Iran, North Korea or Russia.”

The administration is looking “very closely” at whether those sanctions should be applied to India, Donald Lu, U.S. assistant secretary of state for South Asia, told a Senate subcommittee hearing on Wednesday.

In a signal to Beijing, Quad leaders agreed that what was happening in Ukraine should not be allowed to happen in the Indo-Pacific, according to statements made by the prime ministers of Japan and Australia. The statements are in line with a joint statement issued after the summit that said the leaders had “discussed the ongoing conflict and humanitarian crisis in Ukraine and assessed its broader implications.”

Perhaps evident of New Delhi’s resistance, however, the Quad statement did not mention Russia or use the word “invasion.” The White House has not responded to VOA’s request for more details about the meeting.

Emerging coalition in Indo-Pacific

Australia has targeted sanctions on key Russian banks, institutions and hundreds of individuals, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and his top officials. While Australia is not a NATO member, Canberra said it is providing medical supplies, financial assistance and lethal as well as nonlethal military equipment to Ukraine.

Japan, the world’s third-largest economy, has joined Western allies in blocking major Russian banks from a key international payment network known as SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication); freezing the assets of Putin, his top officials and oligarchs; and tightening export controls, including on semiconductors. It is also imposing sanctions on Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and his top officials, condemning the country for allowing Russian troops to enter Ukraine through its territory.

South Korea has announced tighter export controls and joined the SWIFT cutoff of Russian banks. Among the controlled items are electronics, semiconductors and computers; information and communications supplies; sensors and lasers; navigation and avionics technology; and marine and aerospace equipment.

Taiwan, a democratically governed island that Beijing claims as its breakaway province, said it will align with the West on blocking Moscow from SWIFT. Home to the world’s largest semiconductor manufacturer, TSMC, Taipei also announced export control rules on chips.

A fractured ASEAN approach

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, has called for an immediate cease-fire and dialogue. While the statement was cautious, some observers say it’s notable that ASEAN, known for its principle of noninterference and neutrality toward major powers, even put out a statement at all. Still, it did not name Russia.

“The invasion should have alerted Southeast Asian policymakers because it tells us that international law, economic interdependence and confidence-building norms exercise — all key features of ASEAN’s regional order — are not sufficient to prevent an outright aggression,” Evan Laksmana, an Indo-Pacific security expert at the National University of Singapore, told VOA Khmer.

“More than the violation of principles Southeast Asian states claim to be sacrosanct, the invasion also tells us that gray zone tactics that major powers use — whether in Ukraine or South China Sea — may be a prelude to an outright war rather than an alternative to it.”

Some ASEAN members, however, have broken with the group and found their own voice in condemning Moscow. Most notably Singapore, which has announced financial sanctions and export controls on items that can be used as weapons against Ukrainians.

Others have released statements condemning the invasion but have not applied punitive measures. Indonesia, the largest Southeast Asian country, has condemned it as “unacceptable” but also did not mention Russia in its official statement. Nor did the Philippines and Brunei.

Other ASEAN members did not release individual statements but have joined the March 2 U.N. General Assembly resolution overwhelmingly supported by 141 countries.

“Mainly (it’s) the democratic states and those that are most closely aligned with the West, who are explicitly on their own condemning the invasion,” said Gregory Poling, director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Then you’ve got Malaysia and Thailand and Cambodia, who are only doing it under cover of the U.N.,” he told VOA.

In addition to Russia, four countries — Belarus, North Korea, Eritrea and Syria — voted against the U.N. resolution, and 35 countries abstained, including the ASEAN countries of Vietnam and Laos.

“Vietnam is stuck in a tough position here where its entire military is running on Russian hardware,” Poling said. “Laos was much more in the Soviet camp than other parties and still does have a very close strategic relationship with Russia.”

Myanmar’s representative at the U.N., acting on behalf of the government in exile, voted yes on the resolution against Russia.

However, the junta in Naypyidaw has thrown its support behind Moscow. “Russia has worked to consolidate its sovereignty,” General Zaw Min Tun, a spokesperson for Myanmar’s military council, said in an interview with VOA Burmese. He said the support is “the right thing to do” to show that “Russia is a world power.”

“The Myanmar junta has become close to Moscow, so it isn’t surprising that it is praising the Russian war effort,” Joshua Kurlantzick, senior fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations, told VOA.

One reason for ASEAN’s fracture is the effort of individual countries to maintain a balance of power in the region.

“Most ASEAN member states use their relationships with Russia partly to offset the strength of China in the region,” said Aaron Connelly, senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “Many of them are loath to break relations with Russia because it’s part of the way that they diversify their relationships in the world.”

While ASEAN is limited in its geopolitical clout, Connelly pointed out that later this year ASEAN chair Cambodia will host the East Asia Summit, Thailand will host the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, and Indonesia will host the G-20. All those forums include Russia, and if conflict persists, host countries will come under enormous pressure from Western countries to ban Moscow from the meetings.

Meanwhile, China has been careful to neither explicitly endorse nor condemn the Russian invasion. Analysts say Beijing is eyeing the Ukraine crisis with concern, however, and would prefer to see it peacefully resolved.

“The Chinese are risk averse, and if this crisis has taught them anything, it is that there are dire consequences to pay for doing stupid things,” said Sergey Radchenko, Wilson E. Schmidt Distinguished Professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

“Putin has staked Russia’s future on this conflict, and he seems to be losing at the moment,” he told VOA. “Beijing is therefore looking for ways to bring Russia to its senses, perhaps through mediation.”

Source: Voice of America

UN Security Council Meets After Russia Attacks Nuclear Plant

The U.N. Security Council was briefed in an emergency session Friday by the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency after Russian troops shelled Ukraine’s largest nuclear power plant and took it over. Rafael Grossi said the projectile that hit the Zaporizhzhia facility and sparked a fire did not damage any of the reactors and they are functioning normally.

IAEA Chief: Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant Safe After Russian Strike

Russia Isolated in Historic UN General Assembly Vote

Russia found it had just four friends in the international community Wednesday, when Belarus, Eritrea, North Korea and Syria were the only states willing to vote against a resolution condemning Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. China, Iran, Cuba and other Moscow stalwarts chose to abstain in the vote that called for the complete withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine.

UN General Assembly Overwhelmingly Condemns Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine

Human Rights Council to Open Investigation Into War Crimes

Russia was further isolated at the U.N. Human Rights Council on Friday, when the 47-member body voted to set up an international independent commission of inquiry to investigate possible war crimes and human rights violations in Ukraine. Thirty-two members voted for establishing the commission, 13 abstained, and only Eritrea and Russia voted against it.

UN Council Establishes Commission of Inquiry on Russian Invasion of Ukraine

In brief

— Ukrainians and third-country nationals have been pouring out of Ukraine this week as Russia steps up its air and land war. As of Friday evening, the total stood at more than 1.2 million mostly women, children and elderly people who have sought safety in Poland, Hungary, Moldova, Slovakia, Romania and other European countries. A small number have also gone to Russia and its ally Belarus. The number of displaced could rise to 10 million, the U.N. warned Thursday, nearly half of them refugees.

— The United States notified a dozen diplomats from Russia’s U.N. mission and one Russian U.N. staffer Monday that they are being expelled for espionage. They have until March 7 to leave the country. Russia’s U.N. ambassador said it was a “hostile action” by the U.S. government and violates Washington’s obligations as the host country of the United Nations.

Quote of note

“Indeed, every day provides us with newer and newer evidence that it is not only Ukraine under Russian attack. It is Europe. It is the entire world. It is humanity. And finally, it is the future of the next generations.”

— Ukrainian U.N. envoy Sergiy Kyslytsya, during an emergency Security Council meeting Friday following an attack on Ukraine’s largest nuclear power plant.

What we are watching next week

France and Mexico are negotiating the text of a draft U.N. Security Council resolution calling for safe and unhindered aid access for humanitarians in Ukraine. A vote is likely early next week. But, like a previous draft resolution condemning Russia’s invasion, Moscow could deploy its veto to block the measure when it comes for a vote.

Source: Voice of America